ABSTRACT
The “compost” of the 20th century evolves into a new crust of interconnected geology, with accelerating deposition speed, for which there is no natural “absorptive” ecosystem or strategy. Instead, toxic landscapes are swept into extreme close-up; or near eternal storage, locked in hiding from everyday lives. The “Thinking Forest Fabbed Fields” project proposal envisions “AForests”: by-products of contemporary events causing potential toxic landscapes in need of both isolation from human intrusion, as well as repair and care. The project speculates on the design affect and maneuvers that will integrate concepts of deep forest ecology with biotech industries, repair, and maintenance. Departing from existing surveillance and exploitative agricultural technologies, the proposal imagines a new kind of forestry that folds concepts of ecological conservationist approaches together with dimensions of biotech design that repair timelines. The proposal brings up for discussion the potential of design to be an analytical and synthetical moderator in the rethinking of systems that build inhabitability at ecosystem scales.
